Designing Fault Tolerant Control Applications Using Sensor Networks

Sensor-actuator networks are increasingly being used in distributed control applications. The cost of sensors and actuators is dropping substantially and hence control by a large number of these components is now feasible. One such application is the damping of acoustic and structural vibration associated with the launch of a rocket. Reliability in the presence of faults is critical for such mission systems. These faults could be broken components, insecure or compromised components offering erroneous data to the control. The network itself could add unpredictable delays and data drop outs that could affect the control in potentially unanticipated ways. In this project, we considered the Boeing Open Experimental Platform fairing control application for acoustic and structural vibration damping and study the effect of component level and network level faults. We identified several scenarios under which control performance is intolerable. We also designed a fault-tolerant control scheme for linear systems that deals with Byzantine faults of actuators.

Boeing Fairing Simulator

Publications

1. V. Kulathumani, P. Shankar, Y. Kim, A. Arora, and R. Yedavalli, Reliable Control System Design Despite Byzantine Actuators, Fifth ASME International Conference on Multibody Systems, Nonlinear Dynamics and Controls (MSNDC 2005)

2. Y. Kim, A. Arora, V. Kulathumani, U. Arumugam, and S. Kulkarni, On the Effect of Faults in Vibration Control of Fairing Structures, Fifth ASME International Conference on Multibody Systems, Nonlinear Dynamics and Controls (MSNDC 2005)